Resident Evil mastermind Shinji Mikami has finally revealed his reasons for leaving The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks to form his own studio.
Speaking on a talk show recently hosted by Byking, Mikami-san revealed that he had planned to leave Tango Gameworks for eight years before finally making the jump, citing responsibilities to ongoing projects as his reason for sticking around.
Mikami, who also directed the genre-defining Resident Evil 4 back in 2005 on GameCube, explained that he wanted to foster an environment for younger game creators and work on small-scale video games, moving away from the survival horror genre he is known for.
He also clarified a few points about Tango Game works and his former position within the company in the interview, as see below.
I had only been CEO for 6 months. I think a lot of people were under the impression that I was the representative, but I was very close to a rank-and-file employee. I had “___ producer” attached to my name, but I wasn’t an executive or anything of the sort. Tango Gameworks is not the name of a company, it’s the name of a department. The name of the company is ZeniMax Asia K.K.”
Following his departure from Tango Gameworks during the latter half of 2023, Mikami revealed that he had spent a lot of his downtime playing various games, including Resident Evil 4 Remake and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
[Source – Automaton]